According to the sister and brother duo Kathy Petras and Ross Petras, who co-authored the book 'You're Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse,' 11 of the most common grammar mistakes the word experts hear are:
- apostrophes (Wrong: We need to get our sale’s numbers up. Right: We need to get our sales numbers up.)
- Everyday/every day (Wrong: He starts work everyday at 8 a.m. Right: He starts work every day at 8 a.m.)
- I/me (Wrong: The marketing manager told Riley and I to talk with her. Right: The marketing manager told Riley and me to talk with her.)
- its/it's (Wrong: The company just celebrated it’s eighth year since it went public. Right: The company just celebrated its eighth year since it went public.)
- less/fewer (Wrong: Less than 50 people showed up for the presentation. Right: Fewer than 50 people showed up for the presentation.)
- lie/lay (Wrong: I could just lay down and go to sleep. Right: I could just lie down and go to sleep.)
- lose/loose (Wrong: If we stay on this track, we can’t loose. Right: If we stay on this track, we can’t lose.)
- that/who (Wrong: The people that reach their sales target will get a reward. Right: The people who reach their sales target will get a reward.)
- then/than (Wrong: That presentation was better then the first one. Right: That presentation was better than the first one.)
- there/their/they're (Wrong: There going to they’re office over their. Right: They’re going to their office over there.)
- your/you’re (Wrong: Your my favorite supervisor. Right: You’re my favorite supervisor.)
But your reaction to these picture can tell you something about your own nature, too. Linguistics experts from the University of Michigan found that extroverted people are likely to overlook typos and grammatical errors that would cause introverted people to judge the person who makes such errors more negatively.
The researchers invited 83 participants and asked them all to read email responses to an ad for a housemate, which either contained no errors or had been altered to include typos (e.g. "teh" instead of "the") or grammatical mix-ups, such as too/to or it's/its.
#6 Yeah So I Have An Entire Album In My Phone Dedicated To My Mum’s Terrible Texting
Those 83 people then judged the person who'd written the email based on their perceived intelligence, friendliness, and other attributes, such as how good they would be as housemates.
At the end of the experiment, they were also asked whether or not they'd spotted any grammatical errors or typos in the emails, and, if so, how much it had bothered them.
The researchers then asked the participants to complete a Big Five personality assessment, which determines where they are on a scale of openness, agreeableness, extraversion/introversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness, as well as answer additional questions about their age, background, and attitude towards language.
Overall, everybody rated the fictional housemate applicants with typos and grammatical errors in their emails as worse than those with perfect spelling, but certain personality types judged the typo-riddled applicants harsher than others.
For instance, extroverts were generally much more likely to overlook their mistakes, whereas introverts were more likely to judge the applicants negatively because of them.
People who tested as being more conscientious but less open were more sensitive to typos, while those with less agreeable personalities got more upset by grammatical errors.
"Perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention," the research team said.